Part 24 (1/2)
”We're sure saved, Curly, from being tracked down by the Guards and murdered.”
I calculate that one ordinary Arizona day without food and water would have finished Curly, but as it happened this was a desert Sabbath, when the clouds had a round-up for prayer. I ain't religious; it's no use for a poor devil like me to make a bluff at being holy, and if I went to church the Big Spirit would say: ”Look at this Chalkeye person playing up at Me in a boiled s.h.i.+rt--ain't this plumb ridiculous?”
It's no use, because I'm bad, but yet it humbles me down low to watch the clouds when they herd together for prayers, flirting their angel wings against the sun, lifting their gruff voices in supplication, tearing up the sky with their lightnings, sending down the rain of mercy to us poor desert creatures. The respectable people hire preachers to tell the Big Spirit of their wants, but it's the white clouds of the sky that says prayers for us ignorant range folks, for the coyotes, the deer and panthers, the bears and cows, the ponies and the cowboys. Then the rain comes to save us from dying of thirst, and we cusses around ungrateful because it makes us wet.
When the storm broke that morning, the rain roared, the ground splashed, the hills ran cataracts, and Jim and Curly got washed out of their camp, the same becoming a pool all of a sudden, and were much too wet to go to sleep again. Moreover, the fever had left off prancing around in Curly's brain, and the cold had eased her wound like some big medicine.
Jim had found a corner under the rock ledge which was perfectly dry. His leather Mexican clothes were shrunk tight with rain, the staining ran in streaks on his face, his teeth played tunes with the cold.
”El Senor Don Santiago,” says Curly, ”yo' face has all gawn pinto, and it don't look Mexican that a-way in stripes. Maybe yo're changing into a sort of half-breed.”
”I'm beastly cold,” says Jim, grave as a funeral.
”Same here,” she laughed. ”Don't you think yo' disguise would pa.s.s for something in the way of striped squir'ls? With a rat in yo' paws you'd do for a chipmunk.”
”Let me be,” says Jim. ”How's your wound?”
”Not aching to hurt, just to remind me it's there. How did we get to this rock?”
Jim told her about the escape, and how the Frontier Guards had been left afoot, and how the storm had come convenient to wash out the raiders'
tracks as well as his own.
The rain had quit, and the plain was s.h.i.+ning like a sea of gold which ran in channels between the island groups of purple mountains. So one could sure see range after range melting off into more than a hundred miles of clear distance, to where the suns.h.i.+ne was hot beyond the clouds. That clearness after rain is a great wonder to see, and makes one feel very good.
”Talk some more,” says Curly, ”then I won't be encouraging this wound by taking notice of it.”
”Shall I lift you here to this dry corner?”
”No; it's sure fighting, moving. Leave me be.”
”Curly, how did you get that scar above your eye?”
”Buck handed me that. He's sh.o.r.ely fretful at times. Who's Buck? Why, he's second in command of our gang. No, he's a sure man. I'm plenty fond of Buck.”
”The brute! I'll wring his beastly neck! You love him?”
”Wouldn't you love all yo' brothers, Jim?”
”Oh, brothers--that's all right. But why did the rotten coward make that scar?”
”You see, Buck's plenty fond of me, and his emotions is r'aring high, specially when--wall, I refused to be Mrs. Buck. It sounded so funny that I had to laugh. Then he got bucking squealing crazy, and when he's feeling that a-way he throws knives, which it's careless of him.”
”He wounded you with a knife? The cur!”
”Oh, but Buck was remorseful a whole lot afterwards, and father shot him too. Father always shoots when the boys get intimate. Poor Buck! I nursed him until he was able to get around again, and he loves me worse than ever. It cayn't be helped.”
”So these robbers know that you--that you're a girl?”
”They found me out last year. Yes, it's at the back of their haids that I'm their lil sister, and they're allowed to be brothers to me, Jim. Now don't you snort like a hawss, 'cause they're all the brothers I've got.”